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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25071760">Afterlife</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponine119/pseuds/eponine119'>eponine119</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Lost</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canonical Character Death, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 02:40:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,773</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25071760</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponine119/pseuds/eponine119</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Juliet and Ana Lucia have a few things in common. Being dead is just one of them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Afterlife</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Afterlife<br/>by eponine119<br/>June 4, 2020 – June 5, 2020</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You know what really sucks? I got shot. Four times. I almost died. My baby died. I survived that. I survived a freakin' plane crash. Only to get shot and die.” </p>
<p>Juliet's disappointed that her afterlife is apparently being in the Swan station with Ana Lucia. She expected more knowledge and enlightenment, if nothing else. </p>
<p>“Are we ghosts?” Juliet asks. </p>
<p>“Don't think so,” Ana replies. “I'm solid. And no one else ever comes around.” </p>
<p>It's true. They haven't had any visitors. Just being in the Swan Station at all is strange. It didn't exist yet at the time Juliet blew it up, and after Ana Lucia died, the plane crash survivors blew it up again. Juliet remembers that after the blinding white flash, she was surrounded by rubble that looks familiar now, like the orange exercise bike in the corner. Rubble from the blown-up hatch in 2007, not 1977. </p>
<p>She gets some satisfaction from thinking that in some way it worked. She got them back to their own time, even if she couldn't erase the rest. Even if she died.</p>
<p>She thinks about James a lot. How he held her. She wonders if she stops reliving those last moments, if that would somehow free her from this place. But she can't. She wonders if he relives them too. Before she died, she wanted him to forget her entirely. Now she thinks he's the only one who will ever think of her and miss her.  </p>
<p>Ana Lucia hates it when she cries. </p>
<p>There's a lot of things they do here that are more like being alive than being ghosts. “I always thought walking through walls would be cool,” Juliet says. “And flying around. And haunting people.” They can't do any of those things.</p>
<p>“I guess I knew I wasn't going to heaven,” Ana Lucia says, like she'd hoped she would be wrong about that. </p>
<p>“Why wouldn't you?” Juliet asks.</p>
<p>“I killed,” Ana says. “On purpose. And I don't regret it. Even now. Gettin' shot, being here. I thought being in the crash was my punishment.”</p>
<p>Juliet thinks about the people who died in the crash. Where are they right now? Are they in the plane, and is it the whole plane or the plane broken into pieces and falling, forever? She wonders about the crash survivors. She wonders where James is. He'd better not be dead. But if it works like this, where would he be? Wherever he died, she guesses. </p>
<p>“Where are the others?” she asks. </p>
<p>“What others?” Ana is irritated by the question.</p>
<p>“The others who died here. Another woman was shot, with you. And there's the stain on the ceiling --” </p>
<p>“Oh. Libby. Libby was... different,” Ana says. </p>
<p>“Different like she went to heaven?” </p>
<p>“No, she was kind of – not all there. Even when she was alive. She said she was a shrink, but she'd been locked up, too. She kinda – walked between worlds.” </p>
<p>Juliet finds this fascinating and thinks she'd like to figure out how to do that. What other world is there, though? There's this out-of-time wherever they are, and the world of the living. “Maybe it's purgatory.” </p>
<p>“It's never purgatory,” Ana says. “This is hell. I thought the island was hell. Guess I was wrong.” </p>
<p>“Then where's the devil?” </p>
<p>“He's got better things to do.” Ana seems to have all the answers. “Maybe that black smoke, that's the devil.” </p>
<p>“Maybe,” Juliet allows. “Does that mean we can go outside?” If they can go outside, to the rest of the island, maybe...  </p>
<p>She stops herself, not sure what she's hoping for. Maybe it would be like not being dead. Maybe she could see him again. </p>
<p>“Libby never killed anyone,” Ana says. “So maybe she went to heaven.” </p>
<p>“If hell is the Swan Station, what do you think heaven looks like?” </p>
<p>“You're not taking this seriously.” Ana gets up from the couch. Her black tank top is shiny with blood. Somehow they always end up in the same clothes, like cartoon characters who never vary. Juliet's jeans are torn, she thinks from the chains that wrapped around her, pulling her down, but she doesn't really remember. At least it's not a Dharma jumpsuit for eternity. She's thankful for that. </p>
<p>“Then tell me,” Juliet says. Ana looks at her. “About the men you killed. Maybe making a confession...?” </p>
<p>“I've made confessions. I've been down on my knees, praying. I've tried. I'm so tired, I just want to move on. I don't know why I can't move on.” </p>
<p>Everything she's just said is the opposite of her not-purgatory and not-ghosts theories, but Juliet doesn't say anything. Ana was alone here for a long time before Juliet died. </p>
<p>“I don't know the rules here,” Juliet says. </p>
<p>“There are no rules. Except you apparently can't die here, when you're already dead. I tried that too.” </p>
<p>Juliet feels sorry for this woman. She smiles, because Ana Lucia probably feels sorry for her, too.  </p>
<p>“Then tell me about the crash.” James would never tell her. </p>
<p>“Suitcase fell out of the overhead and smashed me in the head. I woke up in the water. It was crazy, people running around. Hurt. Dying. Drowning.” </p>
<p>If they go to the beach, would they find them there? </p>
<p>“Compared to what came after, the crash was fine,” Ana Lucia says. “They started taking us. In the night. Snatching people. We were so... afraid. It was so real, it was like something you could touch, the fear. I killed one of them. The man who was helping to take our people. By the time we got to the other group of survivors, there were only four of us left.” </p>
<p>Juliet's silent, and Ana falls into silence. Juliet wonders if that's all she's going to say, but she should know better by now. Ana wasn't much of a talker in life, but being alone and dead seems to have opened the floodgates. “I trusted him. Isn't that stupid? I thought he was cute and strong and a good man. But he wasn't on the plane. He pretended to be one of us, so I killed him. I stabbed him with a tree branch.” </p>
<p>“What was his name?” Juliet asks, for confirmation. </p>
<p>“Goodwin.” </p>
<p>“You know I wasn't on the plane, right?” Juliet asks, and her voice is familiar in her ears. It's cool and detached. </p>
<p>“Yeah, you died in like the 70s.” </p>
<p>“Yes, but before that, I was on the island the same time as you were. I was one of them. The man you killed was my... we had a relationship. Isn't that funny.” </p>
<p>“If I'm dead, how does my head hurt this much.” </p>
<p>“Time travel's a bitch,” she says, with a sad smile. She misses him. James. She wonders now if she would have lost him, or if they were really meant to be together. It all seemed so clear to her at the time. </p>
<p>“I would have screwed him, if I had the chance,” Ana Lucia says. “Your boyfriend. I'm sorry.” </p>
<p>“You're not sorry,” Juliet says. And she doesn't really mind. She didn't really love Goodwin. They both needed something to hold onto, that was all. “He liked you. He wanted to make you part of our group. But our leader wouldn't let him.” </p>
<p>“I would have killed him if he tried to take me.” </p>
<p>“So I guess there was no hope for him,” Juliet says, and it's cold, too cold. She wonders where he is now. If he's haunting that clearing where she saw him, or if he's in heaven. He was a good guy. Cheating on your wife and being an Other isn't that bad. It shouldn't keep you out of heaven, anyway. “And I don't know, Cindy was pretty happy. And the kids.” </p>
<p>“I screwed a different guy here. On the island. I didn't even like him. I hated him. He was an asshole.” </p>
<p>“Then why'd you do it?” </p>
<p>“Because I could. And because it was a distraction so I could get something I wanted. He had a gun and I wanted one. And he was easy.” </p>
<p>“Sounds great,” Juliet says, sarcastically. </p>
<p>“It just gets to me that he's probably still running around, healthy as can be. That I'm stuck being dead in this hatch instead of a dirtbag like Sawyer.” </p>
<p>Juliet gets very still and very cold. Like there's icewater in her veins, pooling in her messed-up chest. “I was in love with him.” Am. Am in love with him. Will always be. </p>
<p>“Who? Your boyfriend, Goodwin, I said I was sorry.” </p>
<p>“You aren't,” she says. “And I don't mean him. I mean Sawyer.” </p>
<p>“I'm sure there's a story there and someday in eternity you can tell me about it, but I don't care. He was a lousy lay, and it's not like we were into each other. He hated me, too.” </p>
<p>He never told her about it. </p>
<p>Juliet thinks that sometimes hate can lead to sparks. That's not really how it happened with her and James, but there was always something there. Even at the beginning, when he hated her for what she'd done to him. Before she earned his trust, and became the person he looked to –</p>
<p>Her body aches like the chains are trying to pull her apart again. She wraps her arms around her middle and closes her eyes. Maybe someday she won't cry, thinking about it. How it was just for a little while. How jealous and sad she feels. Maybe someday it won't hurt anymore. Maybe when it does, she'll be free. </p>
<p>But she doesn't know how, even if it could get her out of this afterlife and into another one. She would have to forget. Forget all of it, everything that happened. And if a nuclear bomb couldn't do that... </p>
<p>An alarm starts to blare. </p>
<p>“That's how I know this is hell,” Ana Lucia says with a roll of her eyes. She starts for the other room, the one with the computer, so she can put in the numbers. </p>
<p>“Wait. Don't,” Juliet says. Ana pauses. “What's the worst the could happen? We're already dead.” </p>
<p>“The hatch could explode, and then we'd be dead outside with the rain pissing down on us for eternity.” </p>
<p>Okay, so Ana doesn't have a terrible point. “Maybe it would work,” Juliet says anyway. “This station was built on a giant pocket of energy. The computer discharges it, because they hit it, right before I – anyway, maybe it could put us into that next world. Isn't it worth a try?” </p>
<p>“No,” Ana says, and puts in the numbers. </p>
<p>Juliet sighs. It's going to be a long afterlife. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>End</p>
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